Urban Growth and Transportation
An Urban Growth & Transportation Reading List
Prepared by Randal O’Toole
Read This First
- The Best-Laid Plans by Randal O’Toole (Washington: Cato Institute, 2007)Dissects and critiques long-range land-use and transportation planning.
Transportation
- Street Smart edited by Gabriel Roth (Oakland: Independent Institute, 2006)Collection of essays by 20 scholars supporting the privatization of highways, roads, and streets.
- Mobility First by Sam Staley & Adrian Moore (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009)Presents the latest research on free-market techniques for reducing congestion.
- The Road More Traveled by Sam Staley & Ted Balaker (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006)Makes the case for user-fee-driven transportation policy.
- End of the Line: The Failure of Amtrak Reform and the Future of America’s Passenger Trains by Joseph Vranich (Washington: American Enterprise Institute, 2004)Written by a former Amtrak executive, this book argues that the best way to preserve passenger train service is to privatize Amtrak.
- Megaprojects and Risk by Bent Flyvbjerg (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)Why major rail and other transportation projects so often cost more and produce less benefits than expected.
Urban Growth
- Edge City: Life on the New Frontier by Joel Garreau (New York: Doubleday, 1991)Still the best book for a lay audience on modern urban trends.
- The Twenty-First Century City by Stephen Goldsmith (New York: Manhattan Institute, 1997)How the mayor of Indianapolis saved taxpayers millions of dollars by privatizing water, sewer, and other city services.
- Land Use Without Zoning by Bernard Siegan (Lexington, MA: Heath, 1972)How Houston successfully operates as America’s largest city without zoning.
- Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government by Robert Nelson (Washington: Urban Institute, 2005)How and why private neighborhood associations should replace city zoning commissions in determining land-use policies.
- Abuse of Power: How the Government Misuses Eminent Domain by Steven Greenhut (Santa Ana, CA: Seven Locks Press, 2004)Reviews the modern urban renewal movement and how it has led cities to trod on property rights.